Tuesday, May 10, 2016

The Archaeology of Grotta Scaloria Data Online

Scaloria Cave, Grotta Scaloria, is
in Apulia, where the Tavoliere Plain rises to meet the Gargano
peninsula. Hundreds of villages were located there during the Neolithic
period, the villagi trincerati first identified from aerial
photographs taken by the British RAF during WW II. Certainly some of
these Neolithic villagers of the Tavoliere visited Scaloria Cave, for
refuge from the elements, and for the mysterious rituals held in both
the Lower and Upper Chambers.

Grotta Scaloria was first discovered and explored in 1931, excavated
briefly in 1967, and extensively from 1978–80 by a joint UCLA-University
of Genoa team, but never fully published. The Save Scaloria Project was
organized to locate this legacy data, and to enhance that information
by application of the newest methods of archaeological and scientific
analysis.

Finally, this important site is published, in one comprehensive
volume that gathers together the archaeological data from the Upper and
Lower Chambers of Scaloria Cave, which indicate intense ritual and
quotidian use during the Neolithic (ca 5600-5300 BC). The Grotta
Scaloriaproject is also important as historiography, since it
illustrates a changing trajectory of research spanning three generations
of European and American archaeology.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.